SOURCE: "Erskine Childers and the German Peril," in German Life & Letters, Vol. XLV, No. 1, January, 1992, pp. 66-73.

In the following essay, Seed notes that Childers's suggestion of German aggression in The Riddle of the Sands, published in 1903, was particularly insightful.

In 1871 Blackwood's Magazine published the anonymous story 'The Battle of Dorking' purporting to describe a German invasion of Britain. Subtitled 'Reminiscences of a Volunteer', this work was intended as a warning against British complacency in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War which established Germany as Britain's main military rival in Europe. Its realism, prophetic fiction masquerading as direct factual reporting, lay in the detail with which it described the confusion following the invasion and the confrontation between British and German forces near Box Hill. Its author, Sir George Tomkyns Chesney, stressed the total lack of preparedness on Britain's part, and peppered his narrative with morals: 'we became wise...